Thursday, September 18, 2008

Mayor calls off hearing on tweeder protection bill

Mayor Bloomberg is rethinking a bill that would let public officials keep their private incomes secret.

A hearing on the bill, which was to be introduced at the mayor's request, was suddenly called off Tuesday at the request of Bloomberg's aides.

"We wanted to take another look at the issues and the bill before moving forward," said mayoral spokesman Stu Loeser.

Some 7,000 elected and appointed city officials now are required to file annual disclosure forms that reveal in only broad categories the dollar value of their private income and investments.

The categories range from (A) $1,000 to under $5,000 to (G) $500,000 and over.

The bill would eliminate even that skimpy requirement and instead require covered officials - like councilmembers with outside jobs - merely to acknowledge the income, without revealing its monetary value.

Good-government groups like Citizens Union and the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) have criticized the bill for watering down disclosure requirements. And there's been some grumbling from councilmembers and within the Bloomberg administration.

Over the last twenty-five years, beginning with the Reagan administration and culminating with the current Bush-Cheney administration, the Washington establishment dismantled piece by piece the system of protection that had been built since the 1930's economic depression and removed nearly all government regulations that could stand in the way of greed and gouging on the part of unscrupulous market operators. What we are witnessing these days in the U.S. is a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers, savers and retirees to banks, their creditors and their managers. On the one hand, the Fed has pushed real interest rates deep into negative territory to help troubled banks, and, on the other hand, the American taxpayers have foot the bill for bailing out very large financial institutions. *Its on the topic of money but next time ill try to stay with the local pyramid scheme.Its all connected anyway.

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